I’m looking for some advice on how to bond a post-processed resin printed piece to a large PLA print. I assume my options are either superglue or maybe brushing resin onto the PLA, attaching the resin print, and hitting it with a UV light?
Is there a better way? Thanks!
I usually use ca glue or a
soldering ironto fuse or repair parts.That said, if you have good ventilation and ppe I know acetone welding is not uncommon for abs and I’ve come across an older post where that works with PLA. Not sure if it’ll work with your resin, could always try with a test piece.OP wants to connect a Resin print to a PLA print, not two Filament-printed models together!
I understand that, acetone attacks a lot of plastics, I’ve seen mixed comments about it with resin prints for smoothing, I don’t see the harm with trying it on scrap material, at worst it doesn’t work.
CA glue though should work, heat won’t so that’s my bad. Op’s original idea of brushing on resin and curing it sounded possible to me.
There’s also mechanical solutions, if possible op could change their parts to accept a screw, into plastic is plenty strong. or they could build in some sort of snap fit solution but both of those would require design changes and I assume op already has their parts printed.
The problem with brushing on resin is actually not that great because resin for printers will need to be cured. Unless that material is letting the UV light through, only the outer parts will get cured and hold onto the models but when you open it up again the whole middle part would be liquid resin again which stinks and is toxic.
I had this misunderstanding for quite a while myself and though that I can just weld resin party with resin together until I did that with a larger piece and it broke quite easily and seeing that the whole inside wasn’t even touched at all by the UV light.
Hence also why you should shine some UV light into a hollowed model to fully cure it.
CA/superglue should do fine if applied correctly.
Totally fair, had thought maybe keeping a thin amount on the edges would enable it to cure correctly.
Definitely agree wrt to CA, you could use epoxy and other adhesives but CA is surprisingly strong, I have some cassette towers that are glued together with it and they’re not going anywhere.
Not super relevant to this but for anyone using CA glue, don’t use it on fibrous material and please wear nitrile gloves, it reacts exothermically with some fibres and produces acrid vapours, it’s really unpleasant, it should be called out on the SDS (which you should always check, there’s enough stuff in most home shops that I’d wager has special precautions for handling and use that people aren’t aware of)